In contrast as a teenager I worked the register at a convenience store in NYC for less than minimum wage selling cigarettes and lottery tickets to the poorest people in the city. At the time "convenience store clerk" was the most deadly job in the US and I really thought I wouldn't live to be an adult. There was also an 11 year old boy who was employed at that store for 25% of minimum wage (not a typo). The boy worked from 5AM to 7PM on Saturdays and was kept in the basement where he used a razor blade to prep magazines and newspapers that didn't sell.
If you had given any of us a chance to work on a yacht, cross the Atlantic, and leave with a few $Ks in savings, we would have taken it even if the survival rate was 50%. And especially if people would still be writing about our deaths years later. Even now, I doubt the death of a convenience store clerk would make the local news.